Great Rivers South Section 1

Map Details:

Muscatine, IA - Cape Girardeau, MO (501 miles)

Product Code

BC-1811

Brand

Adventure Cycling Association

Price

$15.75

Current Stock: 51

Quantity

The northern segment of the Great Rivers Bicycle Route from Muscatine, Iowa, south to Hannibal, Missouri, closely follows the flood plain of the Mississippi River. These riverside roads in Illinois are rural farm-to-market roads, connecting small farming communities along the river and providing access to shipping terminals for local farm products. They are narrow blacktop roads with no shoulders and little traffic. The Mississippi bridge crossing into Missouri at Hannibal brings you into Mark Twain territory.

Current Printed Version: 2012

Reviews

Average rating: based on 2 reviews.

Challenging and FunRating:

Reviewed By:
Brent McLaughlin on 8/31/11

In 6 days, we road over half of this route from Nauvoo, IL to St. Louis, Missouri and stayed in Bed and Breakfasts along the way. The route truly has it all. The terrain is quite varied from flat riverfront roads along the Mississippi River, to gently rolling Missouri farm land to steep up and down "mountain" like roads along the river bluff to a section of the Katy Trail. Some of the towns along the way were quite interesting (i.e. Nauvoo, Hannibal, St. Louis). There was a significant road closure this summer (2011) which we were informed by locals that it may become permanent due to a massive landslide. It is between Hannibal and Louisiana, Missouri. The detour was 7 miles on a gravel road. Everywhere along this route, we found people to be extremely friendly and helpful. It seemed like they didn't often see folks touring on bicycles.

Nice RouteRating:

Reviewed By:
Bruce Taggart on 6/17/12

We rode from St. Louis to just short of Muscatine. The route was very nice, ranging from flat on the Illinois side to fantastically hilly south of Hannibal. (A previous reviewer commented that the Hannibal-Louisiana road was closed in 2011; it is open now (2012), and very hilly.
There are a few mistakes on the route guide that are not fixed in the addendum yet, but they are relatively insignificant. The most significant one was the claim that you can camp in the park in Louisiana, MO. You can't. The police said that we could camp south of town in what seemed like a toxic waste dump (complete with smelly effluent flowing into the river), but we opted to stay in a nice motel, instead.